Sebastian Vettel: “It has been a good weekend so far”

Despite the gap to the Mercedes team up front, Sebastian Vettel believes the Scuderia Ferrari team can be satisfied to put both cars onto the second row for the Italian Grand Prix.

The German was able to pip team-mate Kimi Raikkonen to third position in the closing stages of qualifying, and is hopeful that another of their great starts will help them move forward on race day, where Vettel believes the team will show better pace.

“Overall it has been a good weekend so far, putting both cars in the second row,” said Vettel. “I’m sure we can have a good race from there tomorrow.

“Hopefully we can take the advantage at the start but we have to wait and see. Once the lights go out we hope we can find a good traction which the tires should give us. It’s a long way down to Turn 1 and even if we can try something the race is not one stretch, it’s 53 laps around here.”

Vettel knew it would have been difficult to dislodge the Mercedes from the front row after seeing the times they’d set in the opening two sessions on the supposedly slower tyre, but was happy to best of the rest, although he knows that it is not ideal to be behind anyone on the grid.

“To be honest, after I saw the times already in Q1 and in Q2 on a different compound, I knew it would be difficult, but you never know…” said Vettel. “I was pushing as hard as I could, probably too hard in the first run in Q3 and it wasn’t a good lap; fortunately in the end I got it back again.

“I think overall I’m pretty happy, not so much with the beginning of the lap but I think our race pace is better than the gap in qualifying indicates, so we’ll see. We don’t mind who’s behind us, the important thing is whoever is in front and we still have two cars.

“The gap is a bit bigger than we would like, but equally the last two races things are coming down a little bit more and things are heading the right way also back in the factory. Even if we don’t like it, we need to be a bit patient, I’m sure it will come.”